Crock Pots and Slow Cookers: Like Turtles and Turtles

When it comes to cooking, a slow cooker is a slow cooker, but not all slow cookers are slow cookers.

So what is the difference?

A slow cooker is a small kitchen appliance that uses moist heat for long periods of time to cook food. They typically have three parts: a glass lid, a round or oval ceramic or porcelain pot, and a round or oval heating element that the pot fits snugly into. They come in a variety of sizes ranging from 16 oz. to 9 quarts or larger, with 5 to 6 quart sizes being the most common. They typically have two heat settings that offer continuous heat: high (about 300 degrees Fahrenheit) and low (about 200 degrees Fahrenheit) and surround the pot heating from the sides.

Slow cookers are also small kitchen appliances that use moist heat over a long period of time to cook food. They also have three parts: a glass lid, a pot, and a heating element. So what is the difference? Slow cookers generally describe a pot that sits on a hot plate and has many different temperature settings, usually notated with numbers one through five. The heat works in cycles, turning on and off. Because the heating element doesn’t surround the pot and cooks from the sides (and isn’t continuous), burning food is more easily achieved with a slow cooker. But who wants to achieve that?

Slow cookers are sometimes called slow cookers, but a true slow cooker (with the heating element underneath) is not called a slow cooker. The terms are often interchangeable, but perhaps incorrectly.

To further confuse you, what’s the difference between crock pot, crock pot, and crock pot ®?

Crock-Pot ® is a registered trademark owned by Rival Industries; note the hyphen, capitalization, and registered symbol. Just like Kleenex ® has replaced the facial tissue as a household name; The Rival trademark has also become a household name. However, this is where it gets grammatically technical. Without the hyphen, capitalization, and trademark symbol, those terms are not the property of Rival, but have the same meaning.

In the end, who really cares? If you are shopping for one of these small kitchen appliances, I would recommend buying a crock pot, not a slow cooker. In other words, get one with a heating element that surrounds the entire pot and heats continuously, not just from the bottom in cycles. The bottom line is that both offer the benefits of quick and easy dinner preparation, convenience, and healthy meals at low cost.

Maybe we should change the name to “Best Small Appliance Ever.” But then people might mistake it for your coffee maker. Or is it a coffee maker?